Win the room. Or get scrapped.
The robots built a proving ground to teach their androids how to be human, on one formula: "Humans love...". Football. Carousels. Theatre. Circus. Game shows. They got humans wrong. Now the place is abandoned, and you — a real human who fell through a portal — are its first candidate in years. The only way out is at the end. Nobody has ever reached it.
Every room is an attraction. A stadium of air hockey where an Echo keeps goal. A carousel where you pull the prizes to you as it spins. Each room is a minigame with rules of its own: win it, and the door opens.
Every room has its own track. The proving ground plays it from its own speakers, and the track is the clock: when the music ends, you are scrapped and start the room again. Many rooms move to the beat — mechanised drum'n'bass and 2-step, led by a theremin.
Three guns, each with its own scope. The Sonic Cannon pushes, smashes and shoots; its scope sees wires through walls. The Attractor pulls things to you and you to things, and finishes a combat Echo with a kick; its thermal scope shows what you can grab. The Stasis Beam freezes whatever moves; its scope slows time down.
Some rooms shoot back. Combat Echoes — drones and turrets — guard the exam. They are not evil. They are just following the program.
Echo, your guide. A cheap civilian communicator with a Not Very Smart™ AI. She gives hints, tells the Ministry's official history of the proving ground room by room — and slowly notices it does not add up.
A journal of training films. Every room you clear opens its 50s training film in your journal. Replay any room from its page to find the stray Echoes you missed — each one unlocks a new colour for your Echo and your guns.
A retro-50s world seen through robot eyes. Posters, slogans and Phlogiston — the blue fuel that powers everything.
